The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives

ALEX DELAWARE
BY JONATHAN KELLERMAN

Back when I practiced child clinical psychology, if you visited my private office in Sherman Oaks, California; or my hospital digs at Childrens Hospital of LA, in east Hollywood; or the suite I shared with two pediatricians in Glendale, you’d find few clues about my personal life.

No photos of the wife or the kids propped on the desk, no shots of me driving fast cars or playing guitar or posed with Faye in Hawaii or Paris or Santa Fe or Jerusalem. Nothing but a few framed diplomas.

The successful-and ethical-practice of psychotherapy depends upon a thorough ego vacuuming: putting your own needs, desires, conceits, and fantasies into cold storage during the forty-five minutes you spend facing another human being in emotional crisis. Realizing it’s all about that person and not about you.

According to some schools of psychotherapeutic thought, an occasional smidgeon of “self-disclosure”-dribbling out judicious bits of autobiography in the name of empathy-can benefit the patient. But even proponents of that open approach are clear that the only shrinks qualified to risk exploiting their private lives as therapeutic tools need to be experienced, rigorously self-appraising, and acutely aware of psychological boundaries-the precise spots where they end and the patient begins.

One cardinal trait of an effective psychotherapist is the ability to “actively listen,” a talent that transcends gimmicky phrases such as “I hear what you’re saying” and depends on a sincere suspension of the judgmental self as well as a genuine interest in the emotional life of the patient. After a few years, learning to listen on twelve cylinders can carry over to the so-called real world. You start to do it outside the office.

During my years as a psychologist, I prided myself on not playing shrink with my loved ones; when I left work, I was intent on being just another husband-dad. Sure, I’d try to be patient and sensitive, but I also needed to be free to occasionally lose my temper, pass judgment, and, yeah, even discipline the kids if they needed it. One of the nicest things my acclaimed novelist son, Jesse, ever told me was “Dad, you never treated me like a patient.” (Jesse’s a great guy and a terrific son, but I’m sure there were many less charitable appraisals by him and his three sisters when I blew my stack or otherwise indulged a sometimes bellicose nature.)

Despite all that, there were times when I’d like to think my training helped me as a father. I understood the developmental stages that affected children’s thoughts and feelings. I got that while kids weren’t miniature adults, they deserved to be treated with respect. Perhaps most important, I realized that quality time wasn’t sufficient; you needed quantity time. I spent a lot of time with my kids, and when I wrote fiction in my home office-which was, and still is, festooned with personal stuff-the door was always open, literally and figuratively.

When I wasn’t the cause of my kid’s problems, I tried to be part of the solution by actively listening.

I haven’t treated patients in a decade and a half, but there are occasions when I still slip into listening mode. That’s because I’m an extremely, perhaps pathologically, curious guy, genuinely interested in other people and the stories they tell. That has led to what my kids describe as “Uh-oh, Dad made a new friend.”

Hence, the guy in the Southwest Airlines departure barn at Albuquerque Airport who started schmoozing with me during a two-hour delay getting back to LA after a family vacation in Santa Fe. He was an interesting fellow who fixed mammoth oil rigs for a living, often under storm conditions. He had a lot to say about the challenges of his job and his life, and I listened. I learned a lot about heavy equipment and life on the Texas gulf.

Then there was the leather-clad former corporate CEO I ran into at a Malibu restaurant who now filled his spare time with cross-country jaunts on his Harley.

The woman who planned high-level parties in Washington, DC, and had met quite a few… interesting people.

The kidney transplant surgeon who used to own a country music station and now bought insurance companies, aiming for one purchase a year.

The former child actress who sold real estate. The septuagenarian great-grandfather who washed cars for a living and spent his free time Rollerblading.

Et cetera.

People talk to me; I listen.

Nothing bores me more than my own story. I want to hear about other people’s lives, and the only way to do that is to Stay Out of the Picture.

I mention all this because it goes a long way toward explaining Alex Delaware and the structure of the novels that feature him.

People talk to him; he does his best to keep the focus on them.

When I was twenty-one, I won a literary prize and thought I was hot stuff.

Unfortunately, no one in American book publishing agreed.

Thirteen years of late-night typing in my unfinished garage earned me enough rejection slips to paper a hedge fund honcho’s Xanadu. Finally, I got good enough to publish my first novel, When the Bough Breaks. But even that was no quickie; I wrote the book in 1981; it was accepted in 1983 but held until 1985 because the editor who bought the book left and the corporate drones at my publisher couldn’t figure out what to do with a story featuring a psychologist, a gay cop, and a story line that ventured into the then-uncharted territory of child sexual abuse.

My advance was six grand, which amounted to about three bucks an hour, meaning Bough was bought as what’s charitably termed a “small book” in the publishing biz.

This means it was predestined to disappear and that would be the end of my literary career.

Being totally naive about the business of publishing, I had no idea that I was being set up to fail, and was, in fact, as happy as a pig in swill. Because I’d been vindicated: no longer was I a pathetic, self-deluded mope with a good day job.

I was a novelist!

To my publisher’s amazement, Bough earned a hefty (by 1985 standards) paperback sale and garnered rave reviews, including a gracious showcase by the eminent British-born critic John Gross (whose departure from the New York Times has rendered that tedious periodical sorely lacking in sparkling critical talent).

Mr. Gross featured my book in a Times daily review along with write-ups of new novels by Dick Francis and John D. MacDonald. Which is kind of like opening for the Beatles.

Dick and John and I all got good reviews, and people went out looking for When the Bough Breaks. Some people even managed to find it. Reorders poured in. The book became a word-of-mouth bestseller.

The rest, as they say, is history. But by no means linear history. It took two more bestsellers, including one that stayed on the New York Times list for three months, and switching to a new publisher to get me working with people who understood what I was about.

None of this is intended as a gripe-fest. I didn’t deserve to get published one second sooner than I did, because until then I simply wasn’t good enough. And one vital component of getting good enough was embracing an old saw: Write what you know.

Yeah, in retrospect that’s a great big duh. But prior to 1981, I simply wasn’t ready for self-revelation-for what sportscaster Red Smith described as “sitting down every morning at your typewriter and opening a vein.” (I paraphrase, but you get the gist.) Nor had I experienced quite enough of life’s dark side to have something important to say.

In 1981, my thick skull finally cracked open just wide enough to absorb the obvious epiphany: It was time to create a protagonist who shared my background as a child clinical psychologist.

Like me, Alex Delaware earned a PhD in psychology at age twenty-four.

Like me, he’d worked in a pediatric hospital, including long hours on the cancer ward, and had burned out.

Like me, he’d treated kids who’d experienced severe trauma, including as crime victims. Like me, he’d learned more than he believed possible about the darkest side of life.

Like me, he had dark hair and blue eyes, though his locks were curly and mine are wavy.

He’s right-handed; I’m a southpaw. He’s Midwestern to the core (more on that later), and I was born in New York City and raised in LA.

He sees twenty-twenty; I’m myopic.

He’s taller and thinner than I am. And, of course, he’s younger, because one of the nicest things about writing fiction is playing God, and the benevolent deity that I pretend to be has chosen not to age his characters in real time.

Overall, I think of Alex as a down-to-earth yet dashing fellow. Energetic, confidently masculine, analytical, insightful, hopelessly compassionate, and, most important, addicted to the truth. In a perfect world, these are all virtues I’d choose for myself.

Right from the beginning, I set out to create a true hero, not an antihero, because in 1981, the antihero was the default cliché.

Unlike me, Alex lives in an idiosyncratic house up in the hills of Bel Air and is single. That last detail is most important, because a married guy with kids wouldn’t-shouldn’t-get into the kind of fixes Alex finds himself in. I, on the other hand, have been married since the age of twenty-two, and I am the father of four and, to date, the grandfather of one.

Truth be told, I am a thoroughly domestic guy who has suppressed a natural tendency toward recklessness and risk taking in order to let my loved ones maintain a sense of security. Exceptions do arise: a few years ago I was zipping around the Laguna Seca racetrack at 130 mph in a Formula 1 car. I’ve owned an Alfa Romeo, an Aston Martin, and a supercharged Porsche, so you can see where my heart lies, automotively. And sure, there have been dark moments. Years ago, I was nearly stabbed to death in San Francisco. I’ve played guitar for a room full of homicidal maniacs at a state hospital for the criminally insane. Have been the only Jew on a bus full of Arabs during a jaunt to the West Bank town of Hebron. Walked the old city of Jerusalem at three a.m. Survived cancer. But no more motorcycles, no flying lessons, no bungee jumping, no carving tools or power saws because, enough scars.

The most dangerous tool I wield nowadays is a ’65 Fender Stratocaster.

Delaware, on the other hand, throws caution to the Santa Anas. Therefore, he will forever remain single and just a bit alienated from the loyalties and routines of domestic life.

For some reason, there is a cadre of readers that really want him to get hitched. Sometimes they write me requesting nuptials in an upcoming book. I appreciate their loyalty, but my response is consistent: when wedding bells chime for Alex, you can be sure the series is over. Unlike a police officer, whose involvement in crime is part of his routine, Dr. D’s entrée to murder necessitates a deft suspension of caution. He simply must be maritally untrammeled in order to take the kinds of risks that contribute to a gripping story.

When, after thirteen years of failure, I began writing When the Bough Breaks, I believed the process to be my final attempt at breaking in as a novelist. Maybe it would’ve been. Who knows? Thank God that hypothesis was never put to the test. The point is, because I saw the book as my final audition, I obsessed about coming up with something fresh and different. If I wasn’t able to come up with something new, I didn’t deserve to break in. As part of that scheme, I set out consciously to sidestep as many of the conventions of the hard-boiled-detective novel as I could while preserving the guts and soul of the genre.

Write what you know meant there was no other kind of book I could’ve written.

My day job as a psychologist was nothing but sleuthing-hour by hour (forty-five-minute segment by forty-five-minute segment) I conducted investigations that traversed the back alleys of the unconscious. Every time a new patient arrived in my office, the process unfolded: solving a psychosocial whodunit in order to ameliorate suffering. A lot of nasty stuff got unearthed along the way.

What I was attempting to achieve as a psychologist were daily triumphs of psychic archaeology: digging up long-buried shards of experience in an attempt to build a coherent picture of a troubled human being, in order to help that human being. If that’s not detective work, I don’t know what is. I’m anything but a Freudian, but I do believe that we ignore the past at our peril. That belief has informed every novel I’ve written.

Still, detective story or not, When the Bough Breaks might very well have turned out as the gravestone marking the death of my literary aspirations. This was do or die, dude; clichés needed to be shunned.

Hence, a troubled psychologist in a nice home office, instead of a wisecracking PI with a seedy inner-city office, a chronic drinking problem, and a buxom secretary whose barely secret love for the boss inexplicably evades the boss’s notice.

Hence, a detailed, accurate, compelling investigation that didn’t test the limits of reality more than it had to.

Most important: my book would feature no effete amateur prancing about as he shows up the pros. Because I detest books that treat murder like a parlor game. You know the type: plummy-voiced, tuxedoed twits with all the character depth of a sandwich sign huff-huffing in the parlor as a body molders yards away.

What could be more dehumanizing than viewing homicide as just another fatuous riddle, easily solved by applying the flimsiest approximation of logic?

Having witnessed the effects of violence as a psychologist and court consultant, I was determined to communicate the nightmare that is homicide and its repercussions. That proved easy, because Alex Delaware, like me, turned out to be a driven perfectionist whose persistence often draws him into some rather extreme territory. (Several years ago, I delivered the keynote address at the national convention of the American Psychological Association. Facing an audience of a couple thousand shrinks, I felt like the ultimate clinical demonstration. Maybe that’s why I began my speech, “I stand before you as living proof of the positive aspects of the obsessive-compulsive personality.”)

Driven, yes. Able to leap tall buildings by himself, no.

My hero would eschew a tortured relationship with the cops. Not only was that the most hackneyed of plot devices, but experiences working with the courts and the criminal-justice system had taught me that detectives from the private and public sectors often meshed quite well and that experts were well received.

This was going to be a crime novel. I needed a cop.

The problem was, yet another gruff, world-weary homicide dick was the woolliest cliché of all.

On the other hand, a gruff, world-weary gay homicide detective… interesting.

Enter Milo Sturgis.

One of the questions I’m asked most frequently is what led me to make Milo homosexual. The answer is simple: the quest for something new and interesting and original. And what could be more compelling than a man, newly open about his sexuality, whose very presence in the Los Angeles Police Department would engender tension.

The timing was right. Long gone were the days when LA cops routinely busted gay bars-and gay heads. (Though I was able to plumb that brutal territory for flashback scenes in The Murder Book-a novel about which I will have more to say.) Which doesn’t mean that the Los Angeles Police Department during the early eighties was in any way gay friendly. Quite the contrary. Even nowadays, when a handful of gay cops have gone public, I’m doubtful that homosexuality will ever be totally accepted in the paramilitary organization that is the LAPD.

In 1981, there were… ahem… no gay cops in the LAPD. If you believed the official account. I knew from my contacts that there were several gay cops in the LAPD. And that, for the most part, they went about their jobs without much fuss-neither running from nor flaunting their sexuality.

Just cops, like any others, doing the job.

In 1981, “gay but so what” seemed to me a revolutionary concept.

The more I thought about it, the fresher and more innovative became the notion of a homosexual homicide detective operating within a homophobic organization that tolerated him, barely, because he did the job better than anyone else.

But Milo couldn’t be gay-the feather boa, lisping, limp-wristed gay of camp theater and episodic TV and West Hollywood Halloween parades. Because, apart from being the worst sort of cliché, a guy like that wouldn’t survive a single shift in the LAPD. No matter how high his solve rate.

No, the cop I conceptualized would be different: tough, grumpy, sloppy, and also altogether professional and highly intelligent. A homicide veteran with a precarious foothold in the world of law enforcement based on nothing other than raw talent.

Milo ’s homosexuality is right out in the open in When the Bough Breaks, as he announces it to Alex because he doesn’t want Alex to find out some other way and freak out. Alex reacts with surprise, then acceptance. The two of them become friends.

After the book was published, I received a ton of nice mail from gay people along the lines of “I’ve always loved mystery novels, but they’re so homophobic. Thanks so much for Milo.”

Bear in mind that in 1985, gay characters in mainstream fiction were just about nonexistent. No Will & Grace, no Brokeback Mountain . No Project Runway.

Was I out to create a social revolution? Hell, no. With thirteen years of abject failure behind me, I never even expected to publish the darn thing, let alone write a series or build the foundation of a durable career. Looking back, I realize that low expectations fed my courage: with nothing to lose, I had the fortitude to create a novel that, at first glance, had absolutely no commercial potential.

Shrink, gay cop. Scores of molested kids.

Once my editor left, the drones at my publisher opined that the book was weird, hard to characterize, and, y’know, kind of yucky.

The reading public thought otherwise, which is why I answer all my fan mail. But for the graciousness of ordinary folk who took the time to traipse to the bookstore and plunk down their hard-earned dough for that first novel-and all the novels that have followed-I wouldn’t be able to avoid honest labor and work the greatest job in the world.

But back to Milo and the reception he’s received from the reading public over a two-decade tenure.

Straight people rarely complain; in fact, I’ve only received a handful of letters complaining about the “gay agenda” and such. Apparently, most individuals-at least those who read my novels-are tolerant. They buy into “gay but so what” because they understand that whom we sleep with has nothing to do with how effective we are in doing our jobs.

Americans-and people all around the world-believe in live and let live. How nice.

More interesting-and, to me, more amusing-has been the evolution of the response from gay readers.

Shortly after its publication, When the Bough Breaks received an award from an advocacy group aimed at promoting positive images of gay people.

But as gay people gradually began receiving greater focus in books, in films, and on TV, I occasionally became the recipient of snarkiness in the gay press. E.g., “How can Kellerman, as a straight man, presume to write about the gay experience?”

Which is not only narrow-minded and stupid, it betrays an utter lack of understanding about what writing fiction is all about. If I had to limit myself to the confines of my own direct experience, I could never write about women, anyone older than I am, anyone from a different ethnic or religious background. Yes, that sounds obvious, but you’d be amazed at the limited thinking of those who choose to incarcerate themselves in sociopolitical cell blocks.

The apex of reverse discrimination arrived several years ago, in the form of a review in a British gay magazine opining that if Alex Delaware were really a great shrink, he’d realize he was in love with Milo.

I laughed. What else can you do?

Since I consider writing fiction a profoundly narcissistic exercise-I shut out the world and aim at pleasing myself-I pay no heed to any of that blather and continue to engage in the same routine that has been part of my life for decades: entering a quiet room, sitting down, typing until fatigue rules. And over the two decades since they first dropped in and introduced themselves to me, Dr. D and Lieutenant S have continued to explore the darker side of the human experience as friends and cocompulsives.

One point of commonality between Alex and Milo is their Midwestern origin. Milo hails from Indiana, and Alex, like my wife, is Missouri born. This is no accident; to me, the Midwest represents much of what is praiseworthy about America, with its emphasis on humility, hard work, and loyalty, rather than the LA- New York ethos, with its emphasis on cosmetics, self-invention, and spin masquerading as truth.

But LA’s so much fun to write about. And what better eye to cast upon the city formed by Hollyweird than that of a Midwestern boy who drove cross-country at age sixteen. In order to… well, Alex really wasn’t sure about his goals, but he did know it was time to escape his alcoholic father and his chronically depressed mother and the older sister who never stuck up for him.

And Milo… gay, Catholic, one of a gaggle of six macho brothers. Need I say more?

Like so many other loners, both men migrated to California in order to escape their personal histories, but they will never be able shed those early, formative years in the flatlands of the Midwest. Though they’ve never really discussed their childhoods with each other, surprisingly similar backgrounds have imbued both of them with a burning desire to learn the truth. To obsessively churn forward until the truth shows its sometimes ugly little face.

These are not guys who have any patience for situational ethics. In the world that Alex and Milo inhabit, the distinction between good and evil is clear. That is not to say they are simpleminded, naive, or blithely unaware of life’s nuances. Quite the contrary; they are complex, intelligent, thinking men who, precisely because they weigh the moral consequences of every situation, are guided by a firm sense of right and wrong.

Alex and Milo are unabashed good guys who are out to get the unabashed bad guys, and they will always be that way because I’ve created them and hell if I don’t think that’s the right way to be.

Alex and Milo admire the same people I admire and they despise the chumps who bring my blood to a boil and who seem to populate the Third World nation that is Los Angeles: smarmy psychopaths, petty politicians, backbiting weenies, faceless bureaucrats, citizen-fascists pretending they can’t smell the stink of the concentration camp a block away. Not to mention pig-headed bigots, manic poseurs, downright frauds, smooth and not-so-smooth cons, ass kissers, buck passers, small-minded wimps, shiftless shirkers. And just plain mopes who evade responsibility.

Working as a psychologist is all about refraining from imposing one’s values on others.

Writing fiction is such a lovely vacation from that. I judge. Oh, boy, do I judge.

I like real heroes. And, unlike the television network executive cretin who opined that Alex Delaware would be more appealing if he had a limp or some other physical defect, I have no problem working with a good-looking, good-thinking good guy.

You want antiheroes who are just as unredeemable as their quarry, go somewhere else. But close the door lightly and don’t wake me up. Nothing is more yawn inducing to me than the conspicuously flawed antihero.

None of that should imply that either Alex or Milo is devoid of problems. In When the Bough Breaks, Alex debuts as a tormented, disillusioned, insomniac burnout unable to maintain a steady relationship or to function professionally. And one recurrent motif of the Delaware novels is the therapist getting through the rough spots of his own life by putting them aside and concentrating on solving the problems of others.

Then there’s Milo. Slovenly, constitutionally grouchy, compulsively stuffing his face, ever a malcontent. He is certainly no poster boy for Perfect Adjustment. But unless his foibles are germane to the story, they are handled lightly. Yes, he’s got issues. No, they won’t stop him from getting to the bottom of horrible murders.

Alex is a hero, but he is also a real person who lives in my head and tells me great stories. And real people evolve and develop and go through rough patches.

In When the Bough Breaks, Dr. D’s past involvement with a group of abused children ends up connecting, quite terribly, to other, similarly mistreated kids, as well as to multiple murder. Alex becomes an integral part of the story. But in the next two novels, Blood Test and Over the Edge, he steps back, is allowed to accrue some objectivity as he assumes the role of behavioral scientist and ad hoc detective.

The success of those books, particularly Over the Edge, which remained on the bestseller list for months, led me to realize that I was going to write a series, and that I needed to acquaint myself more fully with my recurring protagonist. The result was a vacation from Alex, so that I could attain perspective and understand him more fully. During that time, I wrote a stand-alone novel, The Butcher’s Theater, a massive, disturbing account of serial killings (before they became known as such) in the holiest of cities, Jerusalem. The following book, the fourth featuring Delaware, Silent Partner, falls squarely in the noir tradition but also edges into surrealism and horror. Because one of the driving forces of that book was for me to solidify my understanding of Alex, he reverts to the role of primary player, as a supposedly chance encounter with a former lover-a beautiful, troubled, enigmatic graduate student named Sharon Ransom-draws him into a nightmare world of betrayal and corruption.

Confident that I’d buttoned down enough about my hero to continue the series with authority and verisimilitude, I next penned Time Bomb, a book that allowed Dr. D to fade back into the role of expert. Though his love life did take some interesting turns.

That approach continued for the following three novels, until, once again, I felt Alex needed some shaking up in order to enlarge his character. The result was Bad Love, in which a vindictive patient from Alex’s past threatens his very survival. Then back to Dr. D as expert for eight more novels.

Nine years after Silent Partner, I decided it was time to learn more about Milo. The result was The Murder Book, in which we delve into the inimitable Detective Sturgis’s days as a rookie homicide cop, a period when homosexuality, per se, was automatic disqualification for employment in the LAPD. A period during which secrets ruled Milo ’s life and affected his ability to solve a particularly brutal homicide. It is only when a newly integrated Sturgis-by which I mean a Sturgis caught up with his own psyche-reexamines the file that what has become a brain-itching cold case can finally be solved.

The Murder Book also marked a stylistic departure for a Delaware novel in that exclusive first-person narrative-a form I believe has the potential to increase a sense of intimacy between reader and character-was abandoned. Instead, I alternated first person with the third-person flashbacks necessary for excavating Milo ’s initial days as a novice detective. The book could only have been written at that particular time, as it took me that long to build up the courage to deviate from the form.

I decided to break free after reading my brilliant wife’s superb novel Justice, in which Faye initiated that same point-of-view flexibility for her series. I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that being married to Faye has proved an enormous confidence builder in general; she has taught me, always by example, never pedantically, that one needn’t be locked into a stylistic straitjacket in order to maintain thematic and artistic consistency across a series.

Faye’s unintentional mentoring has extended to another area: Anyone who knows my wife knows she is All Girl. Despite that, she displays an almost freakishly masterful ability to write from a male perspective. (Many writers have commented on her brilliance in that regard. The Edgar^®-winning author Brian Garfield has opined that no one does it better than Faye.) Faye’s exceptional gift made me wonder if I could pull off a female chief protagonist. The result was Petra Connor, hero of Billy Straight and Twisted and an all-around great gal who surfaces as a collaborator in the Delaware novels when her talents are needed by Alex and Milo.

Milo, Milo, Milo.

He, as opposed to Alex, is described in great physical detail in every single Delaware novel, because we view him, as we view the world, through Alex’s eyes. Despite that, I have received several inquiries from readers wanting to know if he’s white or black. At first, I was puzzled by the puzzlement of those loyal fans, since allusions to Milo’s pallid complexion, straight black hair, and bright green eyes seemed to preclude anything but Caucasian. Then I realized that I’d described him several times as “Black Irish,” a tag that refers to a subset of Emerald Isle Celts with dark hair-probably the result of long-ago genetic contribution from Roman invaders. A common term during my youth but one that has, apparently, lost currency. I may need to be less subtle.

I have also fielded countless questions about Alex’s ethnicity, including one rather rambunctious reader who insisted that, let’s face it, Alex is Jewish.

Let’s face it; he’s not.

I am Jewish; Alex is a self-described “mutt,” and that was a deliberate choice. One of the many things that working as a psychologist taught me was that once we get over what I call the hurdle of ethnicity, we’re all pretty darned similar, intra-psychically. For that reason, and because I see myself as an inclusive man, I yearned to create a universal character-to write universally appealing books that avoided the ethnic tunnel vision that would be distracting and detract from meta-themes.

There may be some Semitic protein floating around in Dr. Delaware ’s ribonucleic acid. I couldn’t tell you, as I’ve never seen the results of any lab test. There’s probably American Indian, German, English, French, and Lord knows what else in there too. But Alex is nothing if not ethnically ambiguous-a distinctly American persona cobbled together from what is best about the greatest nation in history, a truth seeker undeterred by Orwellian notions of “diversity” or by base, creativity-murdering political correctness.

All fiction is to some extent autobiographical, but it is also a particularly entertaining variant of the Rorschach test-a series of deliberately hazy images upon which the reader projects his or her own fears, affections, and drives. Vegans want Alex to eschew meat. Liberals, conservatives, libertarians, all shudder at the possibility that he might not agree with every single opinion they possess on any given topic.

Sorry, he’s his own guy.

Nearly thirty years ago, when Alex Delaware popped into my head, I had no idea he’d ever stay alive long enough to serve as the springboard for exploring my own existential questions, let alone those of tens of millions of other people.

The fact that he continues to do his obsessive, heroic thing without adhering to-or even touching upon-any particular orthodoxy brings me tremendous joy as I continue to tell the stories to which Dr. Delaware directs me.

I love my job.